Portugal: Porto

First stop on our three week adventure is Porto! This place is really cool. It's kinda grungy and full of stray cats hanging out on street corners. One of the first things we noticed was how many buildings in the city centre seemed to be abandoned. It turns out that since the recession one in five buildings in central Porto are abandoned.   

Although many locals have since moved onto Lisbon to find work, Porto still feels relatively safe. We did however have shady looking characters approach us every so often to buy drugs, 'Marijuana, very nice.' We declined. Instead we took a few years off our lives by ordering this:

This is a  francesinha and it's disgusting. Joe believes it was an important part of the Portugal experience as this is a local delicacy. It is layered with bread, spicy sausage, ham, steak and cheese and then encased with more cheese before being smothered in gravy and buried in chips. (If you want to be really gross you can order it with a fried egg on top too). Apparently it's not acceptable to leave anything on your plate either. The waiter made Joe eat what I couldn't finish and brought extra gravy to help him along.

Our apartment was really central and just around the corner from the Livraria Lello Bookshop or better known as the "Harry Potter" Bookshop. It was a pretty spectacular place and a tourist must. The shop itself is really narrow and actually not as big as it appears. The stair case takes centre stage and dominates the space making this place more of a fabulous staircase and less of a bookshop. 

We didn't spend too much time here. Although it's a tourist attraction we felt kind of guilty that we weren't actually interested in buying any books. We pretended to be interested in a small selection of books for an appropriate amount of time before continuing our exploration of the city. 

We later visited the Cathedral which had some great views of the city. The sun broke through the clouds just long enough to get around and see the city in colour. It's a great city to spend the day just walking around. There is plenty to see. The old buildings have patterned tiles on their front, the city centre has the old trams operating and there are pastry shops on every corner.

This is half of a large family of Cathedral cats. The derelict house in the background is fairly typical of what the run down places look like here. It's cheap realestate if you have the ambition to do up one of these old places. We suspect the guy who owns our apartment, owns the whole building too. Not a bad business venture?

These buildings show the tiling on the outside of the buildings. There are so many different styles of tiling but the blue and white colouring is fairly typical of many places. Sadly the abandoned buildings have sustained a fair bit of damage to the original tiling and many of the windows are smashed in. I guess we don't see a great deal of derelict homes in Australia so it was strange to see, particularly in the centre of busy city.

There were many restaurants lined along the Douro River. It was perhaps the most 'touristy' part of Porto. Today it was really quiet though, we suspect because of the time of year.

There were more restaurants along the Douro River situated by the famous Dom Luis Bridge. We crossed the river and headed towards the caves/wine cellars. The views of Porto from the opposite side of the river made for a nice way to spend the afternoon.

The less impressive side of the river with the more impressive view of the other side of the river.

Porto is famous for its Port Wine, hence the name. While we didn't go on a tour through the caves/wine cellars we did go for walk around the area to see where the magic happens. It was a winding path up hill with more views of Porto over the Douro River.

It was an eerily quiet walk with very few people around. With stone buildings and walls, and narrow roads around the caves it felt completely different to the architecture of the city. After a long walk we found a nice place to settle in to have a sangria (or three) and beer. Tipsy Kate made also made an appearance, the sangria was delicious. 

I think we climbed the world's steepest street instead of taking the cable car to get to the top of the Dom Luis Bridge. The wind was intense being so high but it worth it to cross the river and see the city from the top of the bridge. Cars run on the lower section of the bridge (which we originally crossed) and trams run on the upper part of the bridge. 

As we reached the end of the bridge there was a number of old houses that had collapsed and some completely overgrown with surrounding vegetation - and in such a beautiful location. 

This is what the old trams look like that loop the city.

This building was directly opposite our apartment. We were lucky to stay in such a central location. Porto is pretty fabulous.

- Kate